Pebble has officially announced the latest version of its PebbleOS. The newest firmware has version 1.14 and comes with a couple of cool new features, improvements and fixes to enhance the overall performance.

One of the major tweaks with the new OS is the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature, which blocks all the incoming notifications for a set period of time. Read more »

SwiftKey has released a new beta version of its popular keyboard that adds support for the much requested emoji feature. Previously, the emoji keyboard was only available on Nexus devices running 4.1 and above, even though emoji was available system-wide on other devices as well. A lack of keyboard meant you could only view them and not enter them, which thankfully SwiftKey fixes.

Now you can just press and hold the new line key and access the emoji keyboard. The emoji will appear black and while on devices running 4.1-4.3 and color on 4.4 devices. SwiftKey also recognizes key words, such as “sleepy”, “pizza”, “broken”, “cheers” and “kiss” and presents the appropriate emoji as a suggestion. Read more »

Instagram announced today a new feature called Direct, which enables you to share your videos and photos to a select friends or a group of friends.

The new feature was announced at a special Instagram event by the company’s CEO Kevin Systrom. He also shared that Instagram now boasts 150 million users, raising from 80 million in the beginning of the year. Read more »

When Nokia announced they were selecting Windows Phone as their mobile operating system of choice, the Finns made it clear that they would create applications that made their handsets stand out. Nokia continues to deliver on that promise with the announcement of their Motion Monitor App for the Lumia 1520.

What’s interesting about the app is that there is no need to manually launch it: Motion Monitor simply runs in the background, tracking your steps and movement. Since it is integrated into the 1520, live tile support is included, so you can see your physical activity results in real time right on your homescreen. The app also offers more detailed reports, which you can then break down in a variety of ways. Read more »

You have probably heard of Google’s service dubbed Android Device Manager, which allows you to locate your misplaced Android device from the web and lock/erase it remotely should it get stolen. Initially the service was only accessible from the web interface, but now Google has officially launched an Android app that lets you use one of your droids to look up another.

Android Device Manager app allows you to locate your lost devices from another Android powered smartphone or tablet and helps you keep your personal data secured. Read more »

The latest Android Jelly Bean build has surfaced for the former Sony flagship, Xperia Z, and its softshell variant, the Xperia ZL.

The 4.3 build has recently leaked through xda-developers as a version which was destined for commercial outlets and members of the press. Read more »

Google pushed an update to Gmail for Android which brought several welcome new features to the table. They include vacation auto responders, enhanced attachment functionality, as well as the ability to print straight from your device’s email client.

The vacation auto responder in Gmail for Android works just as expected. Read more »

In its latest update to Play Books, Google added some enhancements to speed and smoothness but by far the most important gain is the option to upload from your Android device.

Now instead of using the Play website to add books to your account you can do it straight from your smartphone. Play Books supports ePub and PDF files and you can upload to Google Play books from any Android file manager. Read more »

Yesterday Mozilla launched Firefox 26 for Android bringing the now stable features of the previous Beta release of the popular browser.

Some of the main features in the latest build of the mobile browser include a revamped about:home page with a streamlined view of the Top Sites list. Users can now also pin their favorite sites to the start screen as well. Read more »

Jolla’s upcoming mobile OS Sailfish debuted on the company’s first smartphone earlier last month in Finland, and has yet to see a global rollout.

Meanwhile, the Sailfish community has been hard at work on improving the OS, and some clever developers have been able to get it to work on the Nokia N9. Read more »

Twitter has rolled out version 6.0 update for its iOS and Android mobile applications, which bring with it some big new changes. The most obvious one is the redesign on both versions, unique to their platform. The iPhone version gets a new white themed bar at the bottom unlike the black on the previous version. The ‘Connect’ tab has been replaced with ‘Notifications’ (essentially the same thing) and ‘Discover’ tab has been replaced by ‘Messages’.

Twitter is pushing their Activity and Discover section in a big way with the latest updates, that show you activity of the people you follow and other people on Twitter respectively. On the iPhone, you now swipe on your timeline to go to the new sections, indicated by the three dots at the top. Read more »

Apple is setting up its annual 12 Days of Gifts promotion and for the first time it will allow US users to join in on the giveaway (Canada and Europe got stuff in previous years but not the US). Each day between December 26 and January 6, people with an iOS 7 running iDevice will be able to download a free gift.

The offer each day will be available for 24 hours only, so you should download the dedicated app to keep track of those. Read more »

Google has updated its Hangouts app for Android and the new version of the messenger now comes with a couple of tweaks and bug fixes.

The Hangouts app recently integrated SMS and MMS messaging, but that update also brought a few bugs along with it. Read more »

Everyone’s favorite cross-platform calling and VOIP service, Viber, has announced Viber Out, its latest service that lets users place calls to any phone number.

More importantly, Viber is directly targeting Skype’s similarly-named Skype Out service by offering significantly cheaper rates. Read more »

The sequel to one of the most popular mobile games is primed and ready to hit Apple’s app store. That’s right, brush up on your rope-cutting, puzzle solving, and candy feeding skills, because Cut the Rope 2 is launching on December 19.

The announcement was made by CEO of Zeptolab, Misha Lyalin at a Cut the Rope 2 press event that took place this past Thursday. Read more »